Bible Synapse
Siloam inscription
Inscription · c. 700 BC · Assyria and Babylon · also called Shiloah inscription, Hezekiah’s Tunnel inscription, KAI 189
See it on the map and timeline
- Date
- c. 700 BC (the carving (dated by its letter forms))
- Found
- Siloam tunnel, near its southern end, Jerusalem, 1880. Noticed in 1880 by Jacob Eliahu, a pupil of Conrad Schick, on the tunnel wall about 6 metres in from the Siloam end. In 1890 it was cut out of the rock and broke into pieces; the Ottoman authorities recovered it and sent it to Istanbul.
- Now
- Istanbul Archaeology Museums, Istanbul
- Passages
- 2 Kings 20:20, 2 Chronicles 32:30
What it is
Six lines of Hebrew in the old Hebrew script, carved into the rock wall of the tunnel; the first line is damaged. It tells of the moment of breakthrough. While the stonecutters were still swinging their picks towards each other, with three cubits left to cut, each team heard the other calling; when they broke through, pick met pick, and the water ran 1,200 cubits from the spring to the pool, under 100 cubits of rock.
How it connects to the Bible
The text names no king, but its script and its setting fit the reign of Hezekiah, and most scholars connect it with the conduit by which he “brought water into the city” (2 Kings 20:20; compare 2 Chronicles 32:30). It is the only substantial monumental inscription in Hebrew yet known from the time of the kings.